Shawn Layden 曾任SIE Worldwide Studios董事長。此前,他曾擔任索尼互動娛樂美國
公司(SIEA)總裁兼執行長、索尼網路娛樂國際公司(SNEI)執行副總裁兼營運長。
Ex-PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden Says ‘Exclusivity Is Your Achilles’ Heel’
if Game Costs Exceed $200 Million
https://reurl.cc/qrAnzN
Video game exclusivity is one of the hottest topics within the industry after
recent moves by both Microsoft and Sony to release their first-party games on
multiple, sometimes rival platforms. This, coupled with rising development
costs and increasingly squeezed margins, has caused some to question whether
the console exclusive has a future.
在微軟和索尼最近採取行動在多個(有時是競爭對手的平台)上發布其第一方遊戲之後,
遊戲獨佔性成為業界最熱門的話題之一。再加上不斷上升的開發成本和日益擠壓的利潤,
讓一些人質疑這款遊戲機獨佔遊戲是否有未來。
Speaking in an interview with VentureBeat, former president and CEO of Sony
Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden said when a video game’s
costs exceed $200 million, “exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel.”
索尼互動娛樂美國公司前總裁兼首席執行官 Shawn Layden 在接受VentureBeat採訪時表
示,當一款遊戲的成本超過 2 億美元時,“獨佔性就是你的致命弱點。”
“It reduces your addressable market,” Layden continued, before citing the
success of Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2, which launched on PlayStation 5 and PC
to explosive success. “Particularly when you’re in the world of live
service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of
opening the funnel, getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we
know, 95% of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all
about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open.
Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same
time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.”
「它減少了你的潛在市場,」Layden 繼續說道,然後引用了 Arrowhead 的《
Helldivers 2》的成功,該遊戲在 PlayStation 5 和 PC 上推出後取得了爆炸性的成功
。「特別是當你處於即時服務遊戲或免費遊戲的世界時。另一個平台只是打開管道的另一
種方式,讓更多的人加入。正如我們所知,在免費遊戲的世界中,95% 的人永遠不會花一
分錢。業務的核心就是轉化。你必須透過打開漏斗來提高你的勝算。《Helldivers 2》已
經在 PlayStation 上展示了這一點,同時在 PC 上推出。再一次,你會讓漏斗變得更寬
。你可以吸引更多的人進來。”
First-party development costs rise with the release of each generation of
consoles, but costs have ballooned in recent years. Last month, Sony boss
Hiroki Totoki offered what he called his “frank impressions” of the
PlayStation business, suggesting its studios can do more to cut development
costs. The release of data stolen from Sony-owned developer Insomniac late
last year also revealed internal concern at the growing cost of the studio’s
games. According to Kotaku's report on the breach, Spider-Man 2 development
costs ran $30 million over the original $270 million budget, and ultimately
needed to sell 7.2 million units to break even. The latest sales figures
suggest Spider-Man 2 has now veered into profitable territory, although Sony
has yet to confirm that itself.
隨著每一代遊戲機的發布,第一方開發成本都會上升,但近年來成本不斷飆升。上個月,
索尼老闆 Hiroki Totoki 表達了他對 PlayStation 業務的「坦率印象」,暗示其工作室
可以採取更多措施來削減開發成本。去年年底從索尼旗下開發商 Insomniac 竊取的數據
的發布也暴露了內部對該工作室遊戲成本不斷上漲的擔憂。根據Kotaku關於此次洩漏的報
告,《蜘蛛人 2》的開發成本比最初的 2.7 億美元預算高出了 3,000 萬美元,最終需要
售出 720 萬支才能實現收支平衡。最新的銷售數據表明,《蜘蛛人 2》現已轉向盈利領
域,儘管索尼尚未證實這一點。
Layden said single-player games have a similar audience consideration as
multiplayer games, though not exactly the same. “For single-player games it’
s not the same exigency,” he said. “But if you’re spending $250 million,
you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it’s
just 10% more.”
Layden表示,單人遊戲與多人遊戲有著相似的受眾考慮因素,儘管並不完全相同。「對於
單人遊戲來說,情況就不一樣了,」他說。“但如果你花費 2.5 億美元,你希望能夠將
其賣給盡可能多的人,即使只多出 10%。
Layden’s comments echo those of former Xbox boss Peter Moore, who in a
recent interview with IGN suggested Microsoft will be debating internally
whether to release Xbox poster-child Halo on PlayStation.
Layden言論與 Xbox 前老闆彼得摩爾 (Peter Moore) 的言論相呼應,後者在最近接受
IGN 採訪時表示,微軟將在內部討論是否在 PlayStation 上發布 Xbox 作品《Halo》。
“If Microsoft says, wait, we're doing $250 million on our own platforms, but
if we then took Halo as, let's call it a third-party, we could do a billion…
You got to think long and hard about that, right?” Moore said. “I mean, you
just got to go, yeah, should it be kept? It's a piece of intellectual
property. It's bigger than just a game. And how do you leverage that? Those
are the conversations that always happen with, how do you leverage it in
everything that we would do?”
「如果微軟說,等等,我們在自己的平台上賺了 2.5 億美元,但如果我們把 Halo 當作
第三方,我們可以賺 10 億美元……你必須認真思考這一點,正確的?” 摩爾說。「我
的意思是,你必須放開,是的,應該獨佔它嗎?這是一項智慧財產權。它不僅僅是一場遊
戲。你如何利用這一點?這些是經常發生的對話,你如何在我們要做的一切事情中利用它
?”